


Deitification

by Eye_0f_Whorus



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: M/M, copious lyrical references, i read lemony snicket as a child and never truly recovered, recovering comma addict; no i do not know how to use a semicolon, this is my first published fanfiction ahh gosh be nice please
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29278434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eye_0f_Whorus/pseuds/Eye_0f_Whorus
Summary: Drumbot Brian returns from his stint in the sun (a la my headcannon version, feel free to correct). Jonny missed him, and Brian missed Jonny, but are either of them the slightest bit emotionally mature about it?Of course not are you joking?
Relationships: Drumbot Brian/Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 9
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prepared to make this into a series if interest is... present at all. Like pulling teeth to convince myself to post this draft and not sit on it for another month.

The worst thing, Brian thinks, about falling into the sun, is that he has time to think about it. Drifting gently into the endless sky, he thinks about his final breath and has time to count backward from one hundred and then forward again. To imagine how big the universe is and try ardently to picture something infinite. 

He has time to think about the lives on Galfridian he failed to save. There is to mourn Gawain and Lancelot and Guinevere, and even Galahad, a little. He thinks about how their voices sounded, how their faces looked, and tries to commit their gestures to memory. He makes an effort to steer clear of his vague, dark, and guilty thoughts. A losing battle, to be sure. 

He has time to recall telling the story of Heracles to a young warrior who thought he was invincible. Jonny had told the kid that the crazy bastard supposedly snapped and butchered his wife and children, unable to recognize them in his maddened corruption. 

Achilles had looked across to where Patroclus stood, head thrown back in lilting laughter at his own joke, and declared that he would know him blind. In death. At the end of the world. 

At the time Brian had very nearly scoffed. Jonny had. Openly and with exaggerated derision. thinking about it now, Brian thinks he should have believed him.

He has time to try to recall the last time he heard Jonny laugh without malice or hysteria. Brian would be alright, he thinks, with the sound being his final consideration.

Presently, he is overwhelmed by pure, searing heat and has no time to think about anything at all, his body lost and broken in the heart of the inferno.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Brian finally comes home, Jonny pointedly doesn’t care what his crew will think when he elects to stay figuratively glued to his Drumbot’s side. 

Nastya and Marius do their best to repair the damage his robotics have taken. He’s more or less still the right shape, but all his parts have melted together into a cohesive lump of ruined and twisted metal. 

Nastya tells him in so many words that it’s fortunate they have some spares on hand after all this time. It would be nearly impossible to get all this decimated brass ticking again without replacing multiple key parts. 

Or- something. Honestly Jonny isn’t really listening.

He just nods at her absently and Marius gives him a pitying look. Jonny bares his teeth at him and Marius rolls his eyes comically. 

And then they are gone and Jonny is alone with Brian for the first time in centuries. He wishes he had done something to prepare. That he had written him something or had a script prepared. Anything but this helpless dread and creeping fear, he would vastly prefer.

What if Brian never wakes up, just lays there on the barebones cot, sleeping like Rose, Forever? 

Jonny finds himself barely believing Brian is here at all. He wants to be touching him right now. Just to be sure. 

Leaning forward, he presses two fingers to the side of Brian’s neck, checking for the pulse of his beating heart. Stopped. 

He shoves his hands deep into his pockets and clicks his tongue petulantly. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

D’Ville spends the next few hours pacing up and down the polished tile, but when Brian finally stirs awake, Jonny is asleep in his wooden chair. Can’t be comfortable at all, he thinks, bemused.

Brian is chilled to the bone and what dull sensation he has in his mechanized body is all achy stiffness. 

Besides that, he’s elated. He feels real and alive for the first time in hundreds of years. Slowly, he sits up a bit, head swimming with the effort. 

He spends a few minutes just resting his head in his hands and watching Jonny sleep, slumped over with his head on his arm and looking far too peaceful and soft for circumstance. It makes Brian smile for the first time since he was hung from the gallows, pained and grim as pistol lead, but genuine. 

Finally, he stands. His hand is braced against the wall until he feels steady enough to stay upright on his own. Stooping slightly, he carefully lifts Jonny from the chair and lays him on the cot, switching places with him and settling into the horrible wooden chair with relish. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonny wakes up disorientated and practically launches himself off of the cot and onto his feet, stumbling several steps. 

“Hey, woah, Jonny!” Brian’s voice comes out in a hoarse whisper, the way a person sounds praying very late at night. 

He stands, steadying Jonny by his shoulders.

The defunct first-mate shuffles through the fastest and most extreme series of expressions Brian had ever seen on him. He looks completely baffled, utterly relieved, and then suddenly a veneer of fury like thunderbolts arcs across his face. He straightens his shoulders, shoves Brian halfway across the room and demands, “WHERE the FUCK have YOU been?” 

“Um?” Brain says “In- in the... sun?” 

Jonny fixes him with a deadpan glare and sinks back down onto the cot, surely intending to be intimating rather than resembling a sullen owl chick, draped in a dusty brown blanket as he is.

“Well, before that, I was,” Brian puts on a gruff voice, sardonically, “‘hanging by the neck until dead’ for like a century, at least. It was kind of restful, as a matter of fact, except that ..” 

Brian joins Jonny on the cot and tells him the whole story. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jonny knows an epic tale when he hears one. Brian gives him an abridged retelling, but Jonny is visibly mapping it out in his mind.

“... and then Mordred drove the station into the sun. So I was stuck there, melting to bits, until Aurora caught me on her radar.”

“No kidding,” Jonny says, seemingly just realizing he had taken Brian’s hands in his somewhere around the time he had started to describe pleading with Arthur to recognize his son. 

He drops them like they’re burning him, which they very well might be. 

Brian takes a shaky breath. 

“And where have YOU been?” He rounds on Jonny. 

“On my way here.” Jonny intends to dismiss his question snarkily. It comes out like a confession, all too genuine.   
He instantly backtracks. 

“I mean- y’know- that right before this we were literally on our way here, obviously. You- didn’t miss too much in between. I- You’ll catch up.”

Brian just smiles at him, takes his hands again, and Jonny absolutely melts into his arms. 

They stay like that for a moment, tentatively, listening to the beating of one another’s mismatched hearts.

Brian feels like he’s holding a live grenade. A god of war and chaos. 

Jonny mutters something half muffled into Brian’s shoulder, feeling, himself like he’s holding something ancient and precious. Priceless art, a god of peace and serenity.

“...polar opposites, you know." 

Brian hums vaguely, a little choked up. 

Jonny blindly raps his knuckles on Brian’s chest. 

“You’ve got the heart I’m missin’”


	2. Chapter the Second, much shorter and likely smoother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the pitiful length. my writing brain very much functions on the same battery as everything else and I have been So Freaking Busy Lately.

Brian had to let go of Jonny eventually, if only because he had missed the rest of the crew too. But he didn’t really want to. If he was honest with himself, this was his idea of heaven. 

It’s impossible, though, to live as long as the Drumbot and not learn to deny yourself anything and everything good and lovely. A deep breath and he releases his metal arms. 

Jonny, adorably, holds on, his face buried in Brian’s shoulder. 

“Jonny.” 

He hums, somehow conveying spite. 

“Jonny.” 

“Sssshhhh!” Jonny hisses at him.

“You have to let go now. I wanna go tell the rest of them I’m alive.” 

“Marius ‘ready did, the gossip” 

Oh. Huh. 

Brian replaces his arms around Jonny and the first mate sighs softly into his hair. 

————-

Brian spends his first moments alone since his return staring at his empty old room. 

Everything is where he had left it, bar the genetically enhanced flowers that used to sit in the vase on his writing desk. Even those things don’t live a hundred years. 

The surfaces are absolutely cached in dust. Overall, the room gives the impression of an undisturbed tomb. 

He turns on his heel and lets Aurora shut the door behind him with a mechanical hiss.   
————   
The clang of metal on metal jolts Jonny awake. Brian or Marius at the door.

“Come in!” he calls out. 

“Can you give me a hand cleaning up?” Brian asks. 

Jonny sighs. 

“Yeah, fine” 

He makes a show of pealing himself off the mattress. Brian is utterly nonplussed, and stiffly offers Jonny an arm, wavering smile plastered on. Jonny just takes his hand. 

The room seems less daunting with Jonny there. Whether it’s the extra set of hands or that Brian finds his presence grounding, he couldn’t say. Over several hours, the rest of the crew filters in and out of the room, wordlessly adding their help to whatever mindless and menial task Brain sets himself to. 

When they are finished, the room is far from spotless. But to Brian it feels like a resurrection. In a good way. 

He sings under his breath as he replaces the flowers.   
—— 

To Jonny, it is bliss to watch Brian come alive again. The help of the rest of the crew cements his return. He’s used to loss in a way that perhaps no other human being could be, but even he can admit to himself that he missed the insubordinate piece of brass. 

The crew of the Aurora is very much the closest thing he will ever have to a family, and to say that Brian has been an integral part of the best parts of his life is an understatement.

But enough with the sappy contemplative bullshit. 

Now that Brain is running again, the Aurora has her pilot once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta for this one. come check out my Tumblr deus_ex_humanitas. there’s fanart and other mechs things. Recently posted a digital portrait of Ashes that took me several hours.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks be to my gorgeous and talented beta reader (you’ll have to take my word that she’s both) 
> 
> and to Viewers Like You, 
> 
> Thank You
> 
> \- Eye


End file.
